A Romantic Get-Away with a “Bed Bug” Ending: A Lesson about Sin?

“BED BUGS” –

It is the one thing we never thought would ever happen to us. I remember growing up and saying to people before they went to bed, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite!” But what I didn’t know growing up was that there really were things called “bed bugs.” My wife and I both thought that this expression was just something people said about some imaginary creature, much like the “boogie man.” But since last year, we’ve had a harsh wake up to reality – “bed bugs are real!”

A FEW DAYS OF ROMANCE

After the end of the semester last May in 2015, I had this idea to take my wife of thirty-four years on a romantic get-away, a second honeymoon. Our kids are all grown with jobs of their own, and so I thought it would be a great time for my wife and I to get away to have some much needed alone time. We both grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and I had gone to Mackinaw Island, Michigan, when I was seven years old, but she had never been there, and so I thought it would be fun to go there together. The island is about nine miles around and is located east of Mackinaw Bridge. There’s no bridge out to the island, so the only means to get to it is by ferry, and since there are no cars on the island, the only way to get around is by walking, riding bicycles, or by horse and carriage.

We spent the day there and had a lot of fun. We went to Fort Mackinaw, a British fort from the days of Colonial America, enjoyed the various re-enactments, went bike riding around the island, and yes, we made it all nine miles. We also went in and out of the many shops that sell fudge, and I am firmly convinced that we have tried every type of fudge imaginable, including one called “Superman Fudge.” There were also many different tourist shops that sold a variety of different things, including all types of T-Shirts. And then on the mainland, we saw the Colonial fort, went through the various tourist shops there, saw an old lumber mill, and even went zip lining. Overall, it was a great trip.

“INVASION!”

It was about a month afterwards when my wife started waking up with bites all over her arm. The red bite marks went from her shoulder down to past her elbow, and they were extremely painful. She described the bites as fiery red and felt like she was burning from the inside out. We didn’t know what it was, but day after day, she would wake up with these bites, and it was becoming more painful by the day. Finally, she called the doctor. The doctor asked her where she was being bitten, and when she told her “in bed,” she responded, “that’s not good.”

After hanging up, my wife went to our bed and pulled off the sheet, and as soon as she did, a bunch of little brown bugs started scurrying to the corners of the mattress. She yelled for me, and when I saw them, I went and grabbed a sandwich baggy to try and capture some of them in it, so we could show them to the doctor. We were pulling back the corners, finding bugs, and we flipped over the mattress and saw even more bugs. The more we looked, the more we found. Finally, my wife was even more horrified when we found bed bugs crawling up and around our curtains.

My wife just stood there in disbelief and horror. We’d been married for 33 years and NEVER have we ever had any issues with these type of bugs before. She called the doctor back up and told her we had caught a few of them in a baggy, and she asked her doctor if she wanted her to bring them in to show her. The doctor replied with an abrupt, “No, don’t come in” and told her she would send her a prescription to Wal-Greens.

We immediately then took the bedding and the drapes and threw them in a black trash bag and took them outside to the trash container, and then came back for the mattress and the box springs, as well as the bed frame. The doctor also told us to call Terminex. Although we attempted to eliminate the problem, it did not solve it. To summarize a very long process, we tried every imaginable solution possible to rid ourselves of this problem with no success. Finally, we bit the bullet and called Terminex, who told us they had a three-treatment plan for ridding homes of this impossible pest. They explained we would have to move everything out of the house and into the garage, shed, and storage units in black bags so they could treat the house. However, on hearing this, it just seemed too overwhelming and difficult for us to do since we had so much stuff, so we tried other solutions with no success.

A 15-MONTH WARFARE!

We have been battling these pests for the past fifteen months. Every time we thought we had them beat, they showed up in another room of the house. Once we moved our bed and curtains out of our bedroom, we discovered that instead of killing the bugs, they simply moved to our kids’ bedrooms and followed us to the living room. No matter how much we cleaned, vacuumed, or what furniture we threw away, the bugs did not go away.

A SECOND CALL

This month we moved our children and their things out of the house and up to Michigan. And during these long months, we have been reducing the amount of things in our home little-by-little. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we called Terminex again. When the man came out to our home to inspect it the second time, we learned some things about bed bugs. He said that the bed bugs were coming from the Middle East and that up until Desert Storm, the U.S. had been completely devoid of any bed bugs at all. However, since that time, bed bugs have been spread throughout the United States.

Bed bugs can be picked up by anyone at any location: hotels/motels, theaters, restaurants, in essence anywhere someone can sit down. Once someone sits down who has bed bugs, the bed bug falls off of them onto the place where they were sitting, and then the next person sits down and the bed bug gets on them and then goes to their home. The one advantage he said we had over many individuals is that we now know what these pests look like. They do not look the same throughout their life cycle, but they change color and appearance, depending on the particular stage of development. Tomorrow, July 25th, they will begin the process of treating our home, and we will finally put an end to this horrible nightmare.

In looking back at this whole experience, I feel bad about the fact that I had taken my wife to this place, but even though my intent was good – to give us a fun getaway as a couple – it ended up becoming a 15-month nightmare.

BED BUGS – WHY LORD?

For the last few nights, my wife has been waking up with bed bug bites on the right side of her back. The pain has been such that my wife has had great difficulty sleeping, so my wife has been crying out to the Lord and asking Him, “Why? Why would you put us through this horrid experience? What is it that we are supposed to get from this?” Although she has been tearfully making this prayer for several nights now, she has not received any reply.

BED BUGS – A PICTURE OF SIN?

Last night, July 23, at about 1:30am, I woke up and could not get to sleep. I started going back and reading over things that the Lord has spoken to us about regarding our lives and things He is calling us into. And He brought to my remembrance the fact that God often gave the ancient prophets visuals to use when they preached to help communicate what He wanted them to say, or He had them go through certain experiences that they used for the same reason. Even Yeshua/Jesus used experiences that the people were familiar with as illustrations in His own teachings.

It is ironic to me that, according to the man from Terminex, “the Middle East is the hotbed of bed bug activity,” and that is where God is sending us for at least the next three months. Was He getting us ready for a “buggy” future? What was the purpose for this? God shared with me that in many ways, bed bugs are a lot like sin. Just like bed bugs, sin is all around us, and we may not be aware at first that we’ve allowed it into our lives. It may start out as something innocent, a prank, a behavior we’ve learned or “picked up” from a friend, family member, or someone else, or even just a little thing, something that we think shouldn’t be “a big deal,” but then over time we begin to feel the effects of it. It grows worse and worse, until it becomes a battle that we are continually fighting, but like our battle with bed bugs, the more that we fight it, the more it seems to win and gain the upper hand.

INFESTED LIVES

Like bed bugs, sin has infested our lives. In many ways, we are not aware of how badly sin has infested it. We look around and compare ourselves with criminals or other “bad people,” and we think, “I’m not that bad.” But God does not compare us with other people; He compares us with Himself. Why? Because according to Scripture, God created us in His own image and likeness:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:26a, 27)

God created humanity, man and woman, in His image and likeness, so that they would physically reflect and represent Him on the earth. As a result, then, God is the standard by which we will be judged since we were made “in His image and likeness.” However, after Adam and Eve (Heb. Chavah) disobeyed God, their disobedient act resulted in God’s original image and likeness to be distorted, twisted, and even changed. And since that time, we could say that humanity has inherited a virus (another type of “bug”) that has been passed down from generation to generation.

A COMPUTER ANALOGY

If we were to use a computer example, we could compare it to a computer manufacturer who was coming out with a brand new computer on the market, and they were ready to go into mass production. However, the night before, unbeknownst to anyone, a competitor broke into the factory and damaged a part of the model’s mother board. The next day, the factory went into major production and created thousands upon thousands of computers based on the damaged model. Consequently, all those newly created computers carried the same damage as the original model. In much the same way, humanity has carried the same damage within each of us – a distorted, twisted, and changed image and likeness – as was formed within Adam and Eve (Heb. Chavah) when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.

WE CAN’T CHANGE OURSELVES

Unfortunately, as the Bible teaches, we cannot fix ourselves. And just like with the bed bugs, we tried throwing out our mattress, bedding, furniture, and even cleaned and scrubbed all that we could with no avail, and so it is with sin, we can try to “clean up” our ways, our thoughts, how we speak, and what we do to try and get rid of the sin in our lives. And for a time we may even think that we have been successful, but then something will happen, and we’ll discover sin again growing in another “room” or part of our life. And no matter how many self-help programs we go through, how many times we struggle to quit, we come to the ultimate conclusion, we can’t do this on our own.

For example, consider the following passages:

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (Psalm 14:2-3; Psalm 53:2-3)

These same lines from Psalms 14 and 53 are quoted by Rav Sha’ul Paulus (Paul) in Romans 3:

For we have previously charged that both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews) are all under sin, as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. (Romans 3:9-11)

Teaching, laws, legislation, etc., may seem to help solve the issue for a time, but it doesn’t because the problem is not an external one, but internal. It is a problem of the heart.

“FORGIVEN SINNERS?”

The message of the Bible is consistent that we have all been affected by the “bed bugs of sin.” We are all called to walk “the narrow way” that leads to life and to avoid the infested “broad way” that leads to death and destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). But the problem I see among many Christians today is that they have given up fighting against the “bugs of sin” that has infected each of their lives and have come to accept the fact that this horrible, parasitic bug called “sin” is just a part of who they are. I’ve heard them tell me and others, “We are no different than anyone else. After all, we are just forgiven sinners.”

What they don’t seem to realize is that if they are truly no different than someone who does not know Yeshua/Jesus as their Lord and Savior, then God has really made no difference in their life. If they are not different, then what do they have to offer any one else? People who do not have Messiah (Christ) in their life are spiritually dead, according to Scripture, but God says in His Word that those who have Messiah (Christ) living in their lives have been made “spiritually alive.” Shouldn’t there be a difference between someone who is spiritually dead and someone who is spiritually alive? If not, there’s something wrong.

SLAVERY OR FREEDOM?

I’ve heard many Christians say, “No matter how much I try, I just can’t quit sinning. I might stop for a time, but then it happens again, and then again.” Yeshua/Jesus taught, “I assure you: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34). You see, a slave can be forgiven, but he or she will still remain a slave. Forgiveness does not “free a slave,” it just forgives them of the wrong that they have done. And there are many Christians who are “forgiven slaves of sin.” They’ve been forgiven, but not liberated. They are still enslaved since they can’t quit sinning, according to their own testimony. But Yeshua/Jesus did not die just to “forgive” people of their sins, He died and rose again from the dead to free and liberate them from the very power and control of sin. Yeshua/Jesus Himself taught,

A slave does not remain in the household forever, but a son does remain forever. Therefore, if the Son sets you free, you really will be free. (John 8:35-36)

Consequently, if we have been truly set free from the control and power of sin, then sin is no longer our master or a “have to,” but if we do sin after being freed from it, then it is because we chose to return to our slavery, we chose to do it.

WE NEED LIBERATION & TRANSFORMATION – NOT JUST FORGIVENESS

What all people today – Christian and non-Christian alike – need is to experience God’s forgiveness and liberation from sin’s power and control over their lives. The Lord has done all that’s needed for us to experience His forgiveness and liberation. The problem is that the “bug of sin” has so infested the hearts and minds of the modern church that they have lost sight of God’s message of a new Exodus from the slavery of this world and sin into the “Promised Land” of His Kingdom, an exodus where we can leave the hurt, pain, and lashes of shame, guilt, depression, and worthlessness behind, and we can experience the forgiveness, liberation, indwelling Presence, love, and power of God and His Kingdom. Rather than the message of the Exodus and the power of the cross, the modern church has substituted human programs to try and meet people’s needs.

Therefore, it isn’t enough that we are forgiven, we must be liberated from the control and power of sin, and then changed and transformed within each of us. As Rav Sha’ul Paulus (Paul) writes,

If so be that you have heard Him [Messiah], and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus [Yeshua]; that you put off [or remove] the former conversation [conduct, behavior] the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:21-24)

Notice that God does not expect His people to remain what they were. We are to change and be transformed so that we can become like Him, righteous and holy, but not by our own efforts and willpower, but by us receiving some new things from God.

A NEW HEART & A NEW SPIRIT

The first thing that we need from God is “a new heart and a new spirit,”

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep My judgments and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Notice that God’s intent is to give us “a new heart and a new spirit.” And it is only after receiving these new gifts that He also will cause us to live in accordance with His commandments. Obviously, then, there’s a problem when someone says they’ve received this “new birth,” but they still cannot live in obedience to God since this contradicts God’s promise here in Ezekiel 36.

Also, the problem here, of course, is that we cannot give ourselves this “heart transplant,” only God can. He is the only one who can give us a new heart and a new spirit, and He is the only one who can cause us “to walk” or live out His statutes and judgments, i.e., His commandments. This means that God never intended for any of us to do this on our own.

YESHUA/JESUS – OUR “SIN BUG TERMINATOR”

Yeshua/Jesus came to earth to deal with the “sin bugs” within our lives and to be our model of how to walk out the way of true obedience to the Father. He, like Terminex, has been sent to destroy the “bugs” that have infested our lives. Although Terminex destroys bed bugs and other insects, Yeshua/Jesus has been sent to destroy the control and power of sin that has infested our lives through His death and bodily resurrection. Only He can liberate us from sin’s hold and power and bring us into the freedom and reality of His Kingdom.

THE SOLUTION: GOD’S THREE TREATMENT PROGRAM

Also, like Terminex, God has a three treatment program for dealing with what troubles us. However, instead of bed bugs, God’s three treatment program is made to correct the core issues of our lives, to transform us into what He had originally intended.

And there are three that [continue to] bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (I John 5:8)

In this verse, I see an allusion to the three main stages of the Exodus, which, I believe, provide us with biblical pictures of God’s three treatment plan to free and liberate us from the slavery of sin and to bring us into the glorious reality of His kingdom. Although I am not going to go into great depth on these three stages in this article, I am planning on discussing them more in depth in the next article. In overview, though, God’s three treatment plan involves –

THE BLOOD. The blood represents the first stage of our Exodus journey, our “Passover Experience.” Yeshua/Jesus, our “Passover Lamb was sacrificed for us,” so that we can apply His sacrificial blood to the door posts and lintels of our heart and lives, so that God’s judgment may “pass over” us and that we may begin to experience the liberation from our “Egypts” of sin.

THE WATER. The water represents the next stage of our Exodus journey, our “Red Sea Experience.” Just as the children of Israel needed to “pass through the waters” to escape Egypt, so we need to “pass through the waters” to leave behind the control and power of sin in our lives. The water represents not only the waters of immersion (or baptism) but also the water of the Word.

THE SPIRIT. The Spirit represents the third stage of our Exodus journey, our “Siani Experience.” Just as God brought His people to Mount Siani to reveal Himself to them and to write His Word upon their hearts and lives on the original Pentecost (Heb. Shavuot), so God will also give His Spirit to those who ask Him, which He poured out upon the original disciples on the Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost. The Spirit leads us and empowers us to walk in obedience to God and His Word.

These three elements, as we will discuss more fully in the next article, are used by God to purify us of the “bugs of sin” that has infected humanity from the beginning. These are not one-time events, but daily experiences. As we’ll discuss, we’ll see this same pattern of experiences repeated over and over again throughout the Scriptures and even in our lives today.

HAVE YOU BEEN LIBERATED?

What about you? Are you experiencing God’s three treatment plan to prepare you for His return and coming kingdom? Are you being successful in defeating the “bugs of sin” that has infested your life, or are you losing the battle? If you are losing the battle and find yourself failing God over and over again, then call out to Yeshua/Jesus, our Divine Terminex Savior, who will come and liberate you from the “bug infested sinful life” that you’ve been living and He will make you clean and whole, and set you free from bondages and torments of this life. He has a wonderful plan for you. Will you trust Him to provide it for you?

PRAYER

If you would like to experience God’s liberating power, please pray this prayer with me:

Lord, sin has infested my life, and I’m tired of losing the battle. Please forgive me of my sins, and come into my life. Lord, I give you every room and crevice of my life. It is yours, Lord, to have and to use in any way You choose. Clean me up, Lord, and make me whole, and help me to follow You faithfully from this time forward. Thank you, Lord, for your death on the cross and Your resurrection. And help me to learn what I need to know to get ready for Your soon return. In Yeshua’s (or Jesus’) name, Amen.

If you have prayed this prayer, I would like to hear from you. Thank you for visiting this site, and I pray God’s blessing on your journey with Him.